Posted on 10/13/2010 10:06:24 PM PDT by muleskinner
China has subsidized their Green Jobs manufacturing sector to the tune of $25 Billion dollars. The making of solar panels is now the province of China. No other country can now produce them at a cost to make it a viable industry.
The new Solyndra solar panel plant in Silicon Valley, which President Obama visited with much fanfare earlier this year, will become a another empty building - a white elephant perched next to I-880 as another example of more empty promises from the Environmental lobby.
Seems like in the last week or so there has been a flood of “news” stories claiming as a revelation what has been common knowledge on FreeRepublic all along.
Anyone who buys solar panels will see Made in China on it.
Nothing more GREEN than a country that doesn’t manufacturer anything.
When the technology exists to make solar power a viable energy source, it will happen, and not the other way around, as the radical environmentalists would con the world into believing. For most of civilization’s existence, the horse and buggy, in one form or another, was the peak of transportation technology. The Wright brother’s manned flight in 1903 to the first jet flight took almost forty years. Seventy-one years later, jets are still the cutting edge of transportation. Some things happen fast, and others take awhile. This generation is so used to rapid change and technological advancing we think it will happen merely because we dream it to happen. Don’t want carbon fuels? Stop using them. Technology will fill the vacuum. Only it doesn’t work like that, and it never will. The world better grow up, and get over the global warming scam and the peak oil scam, and devote the energy that we have towards making better energy in the future. It might take a thousand years.
That's because the promise of green jobs are the equivalent of commie red jobs. Reference, China.
You wanna go green? Then pee in the ocean.
More like a big fat lie...what were green jobs before they were green? Eco friendly jobs..we already had green jobs.
No exploring for oil and gas, no mining for coal and all the heavy equipment needed for both. No oil/gas transport ships, no LNG terminals, no pipelines, no trains hauling coal. No refining of oil into numerous petroleum-based goods, no coal or gas-fired power plants with the rotating shifts of a dozen or more workers at a time. No hauling of coal ash or processing SO2 into gypsum for wall board to be sold at Home Depot.
Just a couple guys in the O&M building watching wind turbines spin on a computer screen, maybe one will need a little servicing. And a couple others out washing the solar panels.
Millions of green jobs??
--------------------------
Obama, the king and master of nothing, kills America financially and when the economy realizes some growth again, those waiting to get rehired as managers and engineers start to find they have to work two jobs as cashiers and janitors.
Obama - We're Not Bankrupting the Country Fast Enough
what we really need,
is the electric car
"
I am in the business of environmental conditioning (cooling and heating in simple terms).
I do both residential and commercial buildings.
With that said, I get many many calls on “going green”, which is nice, I mean, who doesn’t want to save money on energy, especially when you have a large building.
The issue is, there are standard, tried and true methods of conserving energy. Variable fans and motors, insulation, re-circulation of treated air and water, etc. These all work great, and save a ton of money (I would say insulation and building infiltration are the #1 areas to save in).
Now, our business has done several LEED buildings, which is super highly energy efficient by ASHRAE standards. The problem is, the astronomical upfront cost. So huge in fact, that only universities or state or federal buildings (or very wealthy athletes or movie stars) can afford such luxuries.
Our studies have shown, that the up-front cost, and the pay-out cost of such buildings totally negate any savings one would incur. They are pie in the sky dreams. Sure, you might heat your home in a moderate climate for pennies a month, but the total cost over a ten year period (the life expectancy of solar panels and batteries) usually offsets that cost by many fold, if you rely on these more expensive technologies (which these institutions do).
The cost in these materials to get LEED certified would make Paris Hilton blush.
Now, I see many many arguments to the contrary, and I could argue to the contrary myself, IF I was a rapscallion and was only intent on making money. IF I was in the business of ripping of the government, I could be like a few folks I know and really rake it in.
On a final note, if it weren’t for subsidies for many of these projects, they would in no way be economically feasible in any sense of the word, and once those subsidies dry up, you will see a more logical and sensible approach to the whole green idea.
Can one save money and energy? You betcha. But the government is not going to come up with the ideas to do it. Common sense has to prevail, ideas that have been going on for decades, solar heat exchanges for water, geo-thermal heating and cooling, those are all great ideas, but the new “green technologies” that I am encountering are usually impracticable for most of us.
But, as long as we get a few clients each year that insist on using this sort of technology, we install and maintain them. The consumer drives the market, and we aim to please the consumer, but we always make sure they are well informed up front. In some cases they don’t care, in the case of Fed or Municipal bidding, they surely don’t care, its all about grant money, but most the time we can educate the rational property owner into a sensible approach.
By the way, we are now going back to many buildings, and making them LESS energy efficient. The approaches of low-building infiltration (that means almost totally sealed up from outside air) are causing serious problems with Sick Building Syndrome. The government encouraged sealing your buildings, and re-using the air decades ago, and the effects of that involvement are now being realized. Once again, government intervention gone wrong. Outside fresh air is a necessity to a healthy environment.
Im a bit familiar w/ the bio-fuels end of the ‘green industry’ and I can say that there is way more lip service than funding. Day after day I listen to the guy in the other office wheel and deal for $ that he’ll never get. In fact he’s started dabbling in industrial charcoal b/c no one wants his bio-mass for fuel. The ‘funny’ thing is before Barry he was making pretty good $ and sold several very big projects. He voted for the guy thinking he’d get loads of govt $ on top of what he was already making. During the last pres campaign all I heard was how Barry was going to make him rich and how super great alternative fuels are. Now I think hes on the edge of bankruptcy. Barry’s legacy can be summed up in a single word: destroyer.
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